The Gospel Accoding to Yoko

Ukrainian writer Oleg Atbashian ponders the roots of modern trendy-Left pop morality:

"But what is the source of a morality that forbids to fight terrorism and views the United States as the enemy? Clearly it isn't rooted in the American tradition. Such a morality manifested itself on a massive scale for the first time in the 1960s. Many of today's protesters admittedly crave to recapture the spirit of those days. Many will be singing John Lennon's "Imagine."

"My research has led me to the excerpts from Yoko Ono and John Lennon's articles published in the 1972 editions of Sundance magazine. Although attributed to John and Yoko jointly, they were written mostly by Yoko who clearly was the one wearing the pants. It should be a required read for everyone who would like to know where their otherwise lazy and cynical leftist opponents get their passionate idealistic convictions from."

Here is a condensed list (the full text is here):
1. A collective hallucination can create objective reality.
2. "The fenceless and doorless world is soon to come." Obviously it's a good thing.
3. Middle America is stupid and "afraid of youth and the future."
4. People work not because they're glad to have a job but because they're being bullied into working by the "tyranny and suppression of the capitalists." (Karl Marx called and left a message).
5. Immature youth are "the aware ones"; traditional education and thought discipline is the enemy.
6. Material reality is evil.
7. "Come together rather than claim independence."
8. "Feel rather than think."
9. Immature and irresponsible behavior is a virtue.
10. Possessions are immoral. "Any possession that is more than what you need belongs to someone who needs it."
11. A worldwide revolution ("progress") is inevitable, and such a future "cannot be anything but brightness."
12. To resist the revolution is immoral because it prolongs people's suffering.
13. A society based on competitiveness and logic produces "hypocrisy, violence, and chaos."
14. A society based on love rather than reasoning will produce "balance, peace, and contentment."
15. To remove evil from this world men must be feminized (if you liked this one you will also like "The DaVinci Code" which is a 500-pages-long regurgitation of this very doctrine).

Absurdities may be a good material for rock lyrics, but presented as a life philosophy they are, well, absurd. Nonetheless, in the absence of logic and reason whose use had been abolished by liberal education, this psychobabble has become Holy Scripture of the new "progressive" religion. John's fame and his unfortunate martyrdom have turned these mind games into unquestionable prophecies. They might as well be called the Gospel of John and Yoko, from which generations of protesters have been religiously drawing their strength and moral fortitude. Can you say, "Imagine no religion?"

While Yoko may not be the original creator of these inanities, she certainly succeeded in presenting them as the original "Instant Flower Garden" combination package. Planted into the heads of faithful innocents, the seeds have grown into the bizarre efflorescence covering the left side of America's brain that we are dealing with today.

Read the whole essay -- there's much more and it's very worthwhile.

A reply in the comments section (from "BBB") quotes erstwhile rock star Alice Cooper in what is probably the most cogent statement ever made about rock-star philosophy: "Anyone who gets their political philosophy from a rock star is a MORON."

Atbashian also quotes the controversial Ayn Rand in one of her most insightful moments:

"The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology."

I think that sums up very well how we got here. Now how do we get back to reason, logic, and the concept of objective truth?